


Room 320

by MaudeZbornak



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, star - Fandom
Genre: Deception, F/M, Four Scenes in the Same Place, Hotel Sex, Hotels, Infidelity, Jealousy, Loss of Virginity, Manipulation, Manipulative Relationship, Mention of pregnancy, Nobody's pregnant, One Shot, Present Tense, Rey Needs A Hug (Star Wars), Virgin Ben Solo, Virgin Rey (Star Wars), happy reylo ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-18
Updated: 2021-03-18
Packaged: 2021-03-27 06:53:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,318
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30118833
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MaudeZbornak/pseuds/MaudeZbornak
Summary: Room 320 of the Canto Bight Inn, as experienced by Rey at four pivotal times in her life.Inspired by this beautiful manip image in thistweet from @BrightBlackTree, using a writing exercise from Leslea Newman.
Relationships: Rey & Ben Solo, Rey & Ben Solo | Kylo Ren, Rey/Ben Solo, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 8
Kudos: 54





	Room 320

**Author's Note:**

> cw // relationship misunderstandings, manipulative partners, infidelity
> 
> This work was originally posted anonymously, as it is atypical of my other Reylo works; I was curious. Please mind the tags and enjoy.

Rey is eighteen, and it is close to eleven at night on May third. She is sitting in the front passenger seat of an antique, off-white sedan known affectionately by its owner as “the Falcon.” It’s on loan this evening, allowing Ben Solo a suitable ride for his prom date.

Rey is dressed in a blue and silver semi-formal cocktail dress, knee-length and strapless. She is playing with the wrist strap of the orchid corsage Ben gave her, and glancing occasionally out the window. She can see Ben, tall and serious, through the glass sliding doors leading into the Canto Bight Inn as he stands at the registration desk.

He’s wearing his full tux, with the deep blue cummerbund and tie meant to match her dress, and failing to look discreet. It’s a small town, the kind where everybody knows everybody else. It stands to reason, too, that everybody knows prom season is once again here. Thoughts held by young couples have turned from promposals to planning the post-dance activities.

Rey thinks of her friends as she waits. Rose and her boyfriend Armitage, Finn and the girl he invited from a rival school. Jannah something. Who else will follow through on the time-honored ritual tonight? She and Ben left the convention center early, missing the crowning of the king and queen. They weren’t going to win, anyway.

She is nervous. Her heart is pounding. She is pressing her knees together to keep from bouncing her legs. She is going to give herself to Ben Solo tonight, completely, and he to her. She has wanted this since before she knew the first thing about sex, she is certain. With Ben, only Ben.

She opens her clutch purse, dyed the same color as her dress, and removes the compact-style container holding her pills. She’s already taken the one for today; she checks to confirm, as she had before he picked her up and in the bathroom of the venue. She’s been on these for a few months now, starting from when she and Ben set the date for their first time. The pills were her idea, seeing as they were both clean and she wants to feel just him.

She’s startled by the driver’s side door slamming. Ben’s back in the car and handing her a plastic card. Room 320 is scrawled in black marker on its tight envelope. “I’m going to park around back,” he says, and steers the car out of the circular drop-off.

That makes sense. Even if the night clerk didn’t know Ben, who paid in cash, everybody in town would recognize the Falcon parked at a hotel. Somebody would mention it in passing to one of his parents. Or hers.

There’s nothing elegant about Room 320. It’s your standard hotel room with a king-sized bed, with floating nightstands affixed to the wall on either of it. The television offers more channels than Rey has at home, and the whole place smells disinfected. It’s beige all over, and the light-blocking curtains won’t close all the way, so they see a bright sliver of light from a nearby lamppost. The air conditioner makes noise.

It’s plain, and it’s perfect. Rey doesn’t want to be anywhere else.

Ben engages the security locks and chain, as if to make Rey feel safer. He sheds his jacket, cummerbund, and tie and asks if she wants anything first. Wants what? Ice? Snacks from the vending machine? It’s not why they’ve come here.

They stand together in the middle of the room, awkward and unsure. Ben has a good foot of height on her and his head is bent, gazing down with a shy smile. More questions come. Do they leave the lights on? Which lights, because it might get too dark in here. Should they get under the sheets, or stay on top of the comforter? Maybe under is better, because Ben once saw an action news investigation about hotel rooms and how they aren’t always a hundred percent clean. Then again…

Rey’s had enough. This isn’t supposed to be a solemn occasion, micromanaged all the way to the little death. She grabs her boyfriend by his pleated shirt, spins him around, and pushes him backwards onto the mattress. Kicking off the heels that tortured her all evening, she leaps forward and straddles him, and soon they are laughing and rolling around on the itchy comforter. They’re happy; they’ve managed to get this far.

Then it gets quiet, and romantic. They kiss, deep and wet, and their hands caress each other at an achingly slow pace. Zippers, buttons, buckles, snaps...everything comes undone and tossed away until not one thread separates their bodies. Rey is on her back bearing Ben’s weight but she is hardly uncomfortable. She arches up and pushes into him, and fists her hands in his dark hair as though to steer him where she wants him to lavish attention.

When it happens it hurts, but only for a moment. They press their foreheads together, each silently daring the other not to blink. Ben breathes hard in her ear, every noise he makes a low shudder. _Huh, huh, huh…_ as he moves himself in and out of her. Rey presses her mouth against the side of his neck; she doesn’t want him to think she’s in pain, and then stop.

She never wants to stop. When he comes she holds still to see if she can feel it. When he relaxes and lays back she curls against his side, content to rest until they can go another round. She puts her head on his chest and listens to his pounding heart.

She drifts off a bit, knowing this is what she wants, who she wants, for the rest of her life.

***

Rey is twenty-two, and numb from shock. She’s come to town for a short visit before graduation. With her late-in-life parents retired and moved south, the plan had been to stay with Rose. Her best high school friend had been willing to host her, until her parents took off for a spur of the moment weekend in the country. Forgetting Rey, she packed a bag to shack up with Armie in his apartment in the city. Forgot to leave a key.

Instead, she’s at the Canto Bight Inn because Plan B had also fallen through...like a two-ton weight through a thin wooden floor. Rey signs the register and puts the room on a credit card that has just enough left on its limit to cover it. She’s not thinking of the bill that will come, or of the lecture from her parents on observing fiscal responsibility. She’s thinking of what she saw when she slowed her car past the Solos’ house on her way to surprise Ben.

Ben, standing in his driveway, leaning against his car. Bazine, leaning against him. Her fingers hooked in his belt loops, her breasts crushed against his chest, her lips plastered on his. They didn’t see Rey drive past, or hear the loud sob she gave once she turned off the street and pulled over to cry.

The clerk has given her, of all the vacancies, Room 320. It’s a dagger to the heart, and the longest walk up a hallway she’s ever undertaken. Rey drags her rolling suitcase behind her, inserts the keycard, and pushes through into the room. Nothing has changed in four years. Still beige, still plain.

Yet, the ghost of a happier time lingers. Rey rubs her bare arms to stave off the cool air streaming out from the overactive air conditioning unit underneath the picture window. As she recalls from her last visit here, it wouldn’t respond to any adjustments. Your choices were cold and tundra. She and Ben had sufficed by warming each other up under the sheets.

That bed. The sheets have changed, but Rey wonders if it’s still the same one. This was where she lost her virginity, where she experienced her first orgasm that wasn’t self-inflicted, where she pledged her love to Ben.

Rey doesn’t want to sit on the bed just yet, so she slumps in the chair -- same as her previous visit -- and hangs her head. The last four years play out in a montage in her mind. She attended school out of state, he took the track scholarship at the local university. They alternated visits on free weekends and spent their entire breaks together. She stayed until midnight when his parents were away; he’d climb through her window and warm up her bed while her parents slept in the next room. She’d learned to come quiet as a mouse.

Rey thinks about the past year; it was rough on both of them. Internships and finals kept them busy, and apart. Texts devolved from lengthy conversations to trite comments about the weather and dinner. Daily communication fractured. Rey attributed it to a mutual desire to finish and make up for lost time later, but it never occurred to her that another woman had caught Ben’s eye.

Now she’s here, in a hotel room filled with memories she can’t cherish anymore. They will never fulfill her wish of a life with Ben...and he hadn’t the guts to tell her he had moved on.

A soft knock on the door startles her. Her first thought is Ben has come to explain, apologize, let her down easy, or beg her to come back. But Ben doesn’t know she’s in town, unless the small town gossip network clued him in.

She answers the door and greets Poe, who holds out a pizza and a six pack. He reveals the clerk who checked her in is a friend, mentioned in a text that a cute lady was in town by her lonesome. He fished for info and recognized her car. Rey feels put off initially that a stranger would relay such information, but at least the tip went to somebody she knows and trusts.

“How’s Zorii?” she asked, and that’s how she learns the two have split. She’s sad to hear it; they seemed to fit well. “Wanna talk about it?” she offers, anxious to take her mind off her own problems.

Poe says he’d rather talk about her, what’s wrong and why is she sad. As the story comes out, the pizza is eaten and the beer is shotgunned. Poe registers no shock, and reveals that Bazine’s been sniffing around Ben for the better part of a year. “I guess he finally broke down,” Poe says.

“I guess he did.” Greasy pepperoni and pungent hops roil in her stomach. She wants to throw up, but she also wants to stay strong. She has to accept that her life isn’t going as planned. It’s time to forge a new direction.

Poe holds out his hand and she takes it. He’s warm, and the touch feels nice.

***

Rey is twenty-six. She’s walked out on her husband of three years, right into Room 320 of the blessed Canto Bight Inn. Does this hotel have any other rooms available when she desires one, she wonders. What cosmic joker arranges these accommodations?

Rey slings her duffel bag on the bed and paces the room. She’s full of angry energy and nowhere close to tired, even though it’s well past ten in the evening. Her phone vibrates in her hip pocket and she refuses to answer it. She knows it’s Poe. She knows he’s concocted some excuse for his behavior. Either that, or his texts are designed to gaslight her. She’s having none of it.

She flops on the bed and closes her eyes, allowing the events of the past few hours to illuminate in her memory. She’d come home early from work because of a canceled meeting. She had wanted to get a head start on dinner to avoid another night out. Small towns meant few options for dining, and the previous night saw them sitting close to Ben and Bazine Solo at Kanata’s for sushi.

Damn it, but Ben had looked so handsome. He’d filled out since college. Broader frame, fuller hair, same big hands that used to caress her and stir her to orgasm. She once wallowed in guilt over picturing Ben in her mind when she and Poe made love, but her earlier discovery absolved her.

She’d entered their apartment to hear Poe on his phone, speaker on. He was talking Bazine down from the bell tower. _What were you doing at Kanata’s? Ben saw her. Did you see Ben’s face? He’s still in love with her. I thought we agreed…_

Bazine thought they agreed, she and Poe, that they would avoid each other socially. Keep Rey and Ben apart.

“And we have been,” Poe had said, with force. It wasn’t like any of them could move away, he added. He and Rey had lives here, too.

Rey hung back in the kitchen, watching Poe pace the living room. “It won’t happen again,” he said. He’d clear their dining out schedules with Bazine if that’s what it took. “You will not lose Ben. Not after everything we did to break them up.”

Everything. They. Did.

Rey walked back to the front door and slammed it hard to get her soon-to-be ex-husband’s attention. She packed a bag. Pushed him away when he reached for her.

Now’s she here, in Room 320. Familiar ghosts have come to bring comfort, but she doubts they can help her now. Somewhere, Bazine Solo is likely engaging in damage control. Maybe Poe is telling her, “Rey knows,” and Bazine is planning to get pregnant tonight to hold onto Ben.

Oh, lord. Thank all things divine she and Poe hadn’t conceived yet. Rey takes off her wedding ring and sets it on one of the nightstands.

She sits up in bed and pulls out her phone. Text after text from Poe pleads with her to come home. He’s saccharine yet manipulative with his words. She’s completely misunderstood the conversation, and he wants the chance to clarify everything.

Rey refuses to give him the opportunity. She blocks Poe on her phone and, instead of shutting it down altogether, calls up her contacts. She’s had this phone for years, and she’s saved every text from Ben. The last one was from four years ago, not long before that fateful surprise trip. He was telling her about a new sushi restaurant in town and that they should try it when she’s over. In a way, they did.

She hovers a finger over the keypad. They haven’t spoken in four years. Ben didn’t attend her wedding, nor she his. They don’t follow each other on social media, and Rey doesn’t talk with mutual friends about his well-being. She feels the less she knows, the better for her mental health. It’s amazing they’ve managed to live in the same small town for so long without drifting into each other’s orbits.

She opens the line with an emoji, a smiling yellow ball waving a hand. It warms Rey to see his immediate response.

_hey you_

_I need 2 talk 2U, f2f. Important._ Rey gives him her whereabouts and asks not to reveal to anybody. He says he’s on his way.

Ben lives ten minutes from the Canto Bight Inn. Twenty minutes later, he’s at the door. His face is ashen, his eyes are sad.

He knows.

He crosses the room to the bed and sits on the edge. “She told me everything,” he says, and launches into how, four years ago, Bazine told him she’d seen Rey out with another guy from her college. There were pictures, he and Rey weren’t talking much, he made the wrong assumption. Ben says now he realizes the photos were doctored. Bazine is a graphic artist. He says he feels stupid for not knowing any better.

Rey refuses to put the full blame on Ben. She could have stopped the car, could have fought for what she wanted.

Ben explains how Bazine turned wild when he tried to leave home tonight. His fib about a quick drugstore trip didn’t hold. Bazine clung to him, hysterical and apologetic. Poe’s number flashing on her phone raised a red flag. Poe never calls his wife. At least, there’s no reason for it.

Now Ben’s here and looking at her as though he wished he’d never left this room eight years ago. He glances over at the nightstand and sees her wedding ring. In seconds, his joins it.

Rey moves in, standing between his spread knees and holding his face in her hands. Ben puts his hands around her waist and draws her closer.

“I am so sorry,” he says.

“Don’t be,” she says and kisses him. It’s like coming home.

When they make love this time it’s slower, deliberate. Rey reacquaints herself with Ben’s body, all the sensitive areas he likes having touched and kissed. She lays back and watches his face buried between her thighs, fighting the urge to orgasm too soon because she wants the sensation of his tongue circling her clit to last for as long as they had been separated. It’s silly to comprehend, she knows, but when she climaxes she cries out his name as though holding in a secret she’s wanted to expose forever.

She never stopped loving him. He never stopped loving her. It’s only after Ben’s come hard inside her that she remembers they haven’t used protection. She hasn’t been on the pill because Poe wanted to try for kids. Given his and Bazine’s deceits, she can’t be sure either of them have been faithful.

“What have we done?” she asks, laying in his arms.

“What we’ve done,” Ben answers, “is right a terrible wrong.”

***

Rey is thirty. It is the evening of May third, and she is sitting on the drab comforter of the king-sized bed in Room 320 of the Canto Bight Inn. She is wearing an emerald green chemise bought especially for this occasion, which celebrates two milestones.

This is the anniversary of the first time she and Ben made love.

This is also their wedding night.

Each of them experienced a different separation following their reunion. Poe, realizing Rey would not reconcile, conceded to painless-as-possible divorce proceedings. Bazine, however, dragged Ben on for years. She clawed and clawed, first begging Ben to attend counseling, then attempting to milk him dry on grounds of adultery. Neither he nor Rey expected Poe to come forward as a witness on their behalf.

She is not thinking of either of them now. She is waiting for her husband to return to the room, and when he does he is holding the room’s plastic ice bucket, which looks comically small in proportion to the bottle of champagne submerged in it.

He is still wearing his blue suit, worn at the courthouse today. A no-frills ceremony, Rose and Armie as witnesses, sushi for dinner afterward. The smoldering expression on his face adds heat to the room, overpowering the blessed air conditioner. Rey continues to shiver, but for a different reason now.

“You’re sure you’re fine here?” he asked, not for the first time tonight. Rey knows Ben has other visions for their honeymoon. An island, a five-star resort, a foreign country. Rey is not interested in scenery. She is fine to spend the next few days in Room 320, making love and eating takeout.

She helps him undress and they slip under the covers. They pop open the bottle and toast the beginning of their new life together. They are a few years behind schedule, but Rey refuses to dwell on the past.

Sometime later, her chemise is a green satin puddle on the carpet and she is underneath her husband. Despite the many ghosts triggering a variety of memories, despite little change to the decor, she’s come to love Room 320. She intends to supplant the darkness once felt here with two things.

Love and light.

The End


End file.
